Thursday, September 22, 2016

early medicinal advertising (anything works!)

Blame unregulated advertising. Early medicinal ads used outrageous rhetoric to claim the virtues of drugs, cures, products for health, beauty or virility. Any enterprising could make, bottle label and sell something that promised to renew lost vigor, promote longevity, cure baldness, or treat hysteria -often with the same ointment.

cigarettes to help soothe asthma??

or this,

or this,

heroin??

the reddish-brown and extremely bitter tincture of opium is called laudanum. it contains almost all of the opium alkaloids, including morphine and codeine, and its high morphine concentration makes it a potent narcotic. laudanum was historically used to treat a variety of ailments, but its principal use was as an analgesic and cough suppressant. until the early 20th century, laudanum was sold without a prescription and was a constituent of many patent medicines.